Once again, a pretty hefty dose of comics this week. These past few weeks I’ve come right out at the bell swinging at DC’s “New 52,” which has been tiring for all of us. I thought for a nice change of pace I’d start with a Marvel book, particularly one that’s made me a little grumpy these past few months.

FF 9 continues Jonathan Hickman’s fascination with slowly — some might say imperceptibly — exploring the minutiae of conversations between Reed Richards, Nathaniel Richards, all the other surviving Nathaniel Richardses of the multiverse, Black Bolt (via the first of his five wives, Medusa) and various representatives of alien races. I’ve been unhappy with FF since issue 1. I think Hickman has lost the plot, I think he’s wasted all the excitement and enthusiasm he built in the preceding two years of Fantastic Four by killing off Johnny Storm in a whirlwind of hype, I think he’s mishandled Ben Grimm’s role in the book, and most of all, I feel like he’s been wasting my time and money with his incessant water treading. Issue 9, however, made my stomach drop. There’s a scene where the League of Fantastic Four Supervillians of Days Past turn on Dr. Doom, and he flashes that Doom menace right up until the moment one of the future Reed Richards fastens a brain-destroying technocollar on Doom, telling him that they’re now stalemated. Some day Doom will turn against this Reed, and when he does, Reed’s gonna activate the collar and give Doom massive brain damage. Many months ago, I wondered where this exact version of Doom picked up his brain damage … THAT’S RIGHT. Hickman just dropped the other shoe that’s been hanging in time and space for about a year. Now I begin to see, Mr. Hickman. There’s the long view in comics (a standard six-month arc), and there’s the l-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng view (Hickman’s current feat). Everything about this book just became more interesting not just going forward but RETROACTIVELY. This is how you do an effective time travel story; make the reader experience some chronological distortion of their own.

OK, now we can talk about a New 52 book. The Savage Hawkman 1 (by Tony Daniel and Philip Tan) is the one book in this whole magilla I’ve actually been anticipating. I’m a Hawkman fan, I’ve enjoyed several iterations of the character over the years and I don’t believe any of ‘em have been the definitive Hawkman — at least not for me. Carter Hall has one of the most tangled, Crisis-bollixed back stories of any characters in the DCU. He’s been a Thanagarian space cop, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, a deathless human warrior and DC’s all-purpose yeast (he’s always rising from the dead, you see). The New 52 is a chance to finally pick a Hawkman origin story and tell it. So of course, Daniel starts right off with Carter being a tortured, grizzled vet of a superhero who’s so sick of his Thanagarian Nth metal wings and harness that he burns them in a fire, but soon comes to learn that the Nth metal has bonded with his body and now he can go full Hawky whenever he wants. So is he human or Thanagarian? Dunno. Is he frequently reincarnated? No idea. The bad guy, Morphicus, (terrible name) claims Carter is “not of this world,” to which Carter responds “Born and bred in the U.S. of A.” So he’s both alien and earthling, or unaware of his true origin and long past (the latter implied by Morphicus’ inability to overpower Carter’s “strong lifeforce”). Based on this first issue, Tony Daniel has opted to retain all the clutter and back story of the Old 52 Hawkman, which makes no sense at all. I thought the plan for this restart was that anybody could pick up any DC book and have an idea of who the main character is and why they should care. I’ve read lots of Hawkman stories, and I’m uncertain who this Carter is, and it sure don’t feel like I care. This book better get so great so quickly or so help me, I’ll … um … I’ll … Well, I guess I’ll have no DC books in my rotation.

Take a look at the cover of Amazing Spider-Man 670: J. Jonah Jameson as Spider-Man. Now listen carefully: As awesome and tingly as that cover makes you feel, what actually happens inside is so much better. This is the ultimate Marvel Team-Up story, as Spidey and the man Spidey refers to as Spider-Stache pair up and fight the Spider Island infestation. I know Ultimate Spider-Man has been garnering all the press lately, but this is the Spider book of your dreams. Everything is in this: comedy, tragedy, action, quips, a spittle-flecked rant from JJJ, a giant spider-humanoid with a familiar push broom mustache — all comics should be this much fun. Dan Slott, you have done the impossible with this book. I’m reading and enjoying a comic story that’s so big it comes with an issue checklist.

See, look at this. Incredible Herc 8 is a Spider Island tie-in, and I continue to buy it because my Slott love runneth over. Actually, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have some good stuff going on in this storyline. Herc has been infected by the Spider Virus and now has Spidey’s powers, and as we saw last issue, immediately developed an interior monologue that caused him to question the responsibilities of such power in a mortal. Don’t worry, he drowned out the voice with a keg of beer, so now he’s a half-drunken Spider-Herc fighting the X-men as the Spider Virus tries to force him to do bad things. He beats the X-men, too, thanks to a little help from Arachne (of Greek mythology). And then, these two Greek spider-centaurs take a trip to Sexxxytown. Look, this is a Teen + rated book, and I don’t want to sound prudish, but Herc-Spider and Arachne-Spider getting it on in front of Wolverine, Storm and Emma Frost is kinda creepy — Emma being totally into watching isn’t helping any. More superhero stuff and less arachnid sex would be appreciated.

Matt Fraction and Olivier Coipel wrap up their first arc on The Mighty Thor with issue 6. Fraction takes his tale of Galactus and Odin (and Silver Surfer and Thor) fighting over the World Seed and works in the novel idea of using the Destroyer as the problem solver — ha!, no I’m kidding. I’ve seen more Destroyer in the past two years than I did in the previous twenty. He’s approaching Joker levels of overexposure. Anyway, Odin kinda sorta strategizes his way out of the fight, aided by Loki’s trickery (he hides the World Seed in another dimension) and by Pastor Mike of Broxton, Oklahoma. Honestly, for a fight advertised as “Silver Surfer vs. Asgard,” it’s the philosophical discussions between Pastor Mike and Silver Surfer that redeem this book. The pastor’s pleas for non-violence appeal to the Zenn-Lavian buried deep in the Surfer, and he ends up making some huge career choices based on Pastor Mike’s argument. Mike ends up transformed as well. Still, the book ain’t called Surfer/Mike — last issue had Thor doing some serious Galactus bashing, which was appreciated, but I’d have liked the big lug to take a more active role in his own book this month. And what happened to Sif? She just sort of hung around in the background of this one, like she’s bored with saving her homeland. Sif ain’t the shy, retiring type — she also needs to be playing a bigger part in this book.

I wouldn’t consider myself a huge Wizard of Oz fan — I’ve never read a single one of the actual books — but the lady of the house is, so I picked up Marvel’s Wizard of Oz book on her behalf at last year’s Free Comic Book Day, and I ended up enjoying it. Eric Shanower and Skottie Young’s new Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz number 1 is exactly the kind of comic that could make one a fan of the whole phenomenon. Young’s art is vibrant and exciting and captures the magic of Oz, Shanower’s characterization of Dorothy and her second cousin, Zebediah, is charming, the story of Dorothy’s unexpected return to Oz is tension-fraught and interesting — this is a dandy little comic book, and it’s all ages. If you buy it and don’t like it, you can always give it to a nearby kid.

Warlord of Mars 10, by Arvid Nelson and Stephen Sadowski, jumps right into the next Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novel, Gods of Mars. I don’t like Sadowski’s art as much as I liked Lui Antonio’s run on this book, but this is not bad. Dejah Thoris and John Carter’s son, Carthoris, is a young hatchling trying to clear his father’s name of murder (that’s the Civil War Virginian in him — he’s never even met his father, because John left Barsoom before the kid hatched), and he’s teamed up with Tars Tarkas, who’s quite the badass warrior Thark in this one. ERB’s plots are direct and whip-fast in developing, and Arvid Nelson has ably captured that unstoppable sense of forward motion in this series. Warlord of Mars is not what you’d call a prestige book — it’s all about action and lots of it, and that’s fine by me. In just under a year, Warlord of Mars has become one of my favorite books to see in my hold pile, and for good reason.

So what’s the best thing I read this week? That’s a tough one. Amazing Spider-Man continued its streak of rollicking, feel good comic bookery, but FF made so many seemingly dead-end plot points leap into place and point the way to “HOLY MOLY” that it feels like it has the edge. I’ll say this for FF: After finishing this issue, I wanted to immediately go back and read the preceding two years worth of comics to see what clues I missed. I think that has to be the tie-breaker. Any comic that makes you want to re-read everything up to the current issue has something going for it. From somewhere in the future, FF 9 materialized and immediately became the best thing I read this week. Which is great for me personally, because I was contemplating giving up on this book at the end of the year. Now, the FF and I are good for at least another couple years, or until Hickman leaves.

-Paul

There is a lot of weird parallelism in this week’s stack of books. Two beginnings, two presumed endings, two John Carters of Marses, two Bongo comics — it’s a little like a cosmic coincidence, times two. Let’s put on our mottled Dr. Strange gloves and dig into our mystical conundrum, shall we?

Of the beginnings, one is a mistake. I bought Legion Lost 1 because I wasn’t paying attention and assumed Paul Levitz was writing this one. He is not. Fabian Nicieza scripts Legion Lost, which seems to pick up exactly where one issue of Flashpoint left off, which I didn’t bother to read. Timberwolf, Dawnstar, Wildfire, Gates, Tellus, Tyroc and two Legionnaires I don’t recognize are thrown from the 31st century into our era as they pursue Alastor, a bad guy who’s carrying some sort of contagion back through the timeline. It’s your standard “heroes from the future have to adjust to our time/customs/atmosphere” plot, and those two Legionnaires I don’t recognize are dead before the issue’s over. This one registers a pretty solid nothing on the excitement scale. Nothing about it feels like a Legion book which means it has very little to offer fans of LSH, and as a superhero book it reads like a very bland imitation of your choice of a half-dozen X-men storylines. See, this is why I don’t normally buy anything Fabian Nicieza writes.

Paul Cornell and Diogenes Neves’ Demon Knights 1 fares a little better, probably by comparison. I bought this solely for Etrigan, and also for a little swords and sorcery action. It’s surprisingly meh, however. We see Merlin bind Etrigan to Jason Blood — excuse me — Jason of Norwich on the night Camelot falls, and then we jump forward to when Jason is bumming around the Dark Ages with Madame Xanadu. Their soon-to-be enemies are Mordru and I think Morgan Le Fay (she’s never addressed directly, but that’s always Jason Blood’s enemy), but before we can get into that, Jason and Xanadu have to conveniently assemble with five other uniquely gifted stock characters in a pub so they can become, as Cornell notes in his in-book interview, “the Medieval Magnificent Seven.” Please note that that’s his answer to the question, “What new things are you doing with these characters?” Also note that the Magnificent Seven is a rip-off of Seven Samurai. So Demon Knights is a rip-off of a rip-off, and it shows. Of the very small sample size of New 52 books I’ve read so far, this seems to be the underlying problem: There are very few “new” elements, just proven clichés applied to old characters in new ways. I hope Savage Hawkman disproves this theory …

It’s oddly synchronous that in this month of all-new DC Comics, Dark Horse’s attempted relaunch of the Gold Key characters would stagger to a halt. Or at least that’s what the rumors are; I haven’t seen an official word from Dark Horse. There’s one more Turok on their schedule after this month’s issue 3, and nothing else for any of the other titles through the end of the year, so draw your own conclusions. Turok has been fairly enjoyable as far as Native American dinosaur hunters fighting Aztecs goes, but three issues since Free Comic Book Day — 2010 edition — makes it hard to build a relationship with the characters. Doctor Solar 8 is definitely a full stop, as the good Doctor bests his dangerous foe (and inadvertent creator) Nuro in the main feature and discovers that Nuro is responsible for his creation in the back up. Solar and Magnus were the best of the relaunched bunch, both throwback comics that showed the usual Jim Shooter wit and verve, as well as both exhibiting a far-greater-than-average comprehension of what a comic book story should be and how it should be constructed. I know a lot people have grudges against Shooter because of things he did or didn’t do in the past, but I’ve never met the guy. All I know about him comes from his writing, and that guy seems to believe intelligence and heroism are the stuff of life. A little bit of humor doesn’t hurt either. Believe me, I’ll miss Doctor Solar and Magnus a lot more than I’ll miss Demon Knights in a six months.

And whattya know, here come my two John Carter comics. Marvel debuts John Carter: A Princess of Mars 1 of 5 by Roger Langridge and Filipe Andrade, while Dynamite wraps up the first arc of its Warlord of Mars with issue 9 (by Arvid Nelson and Lui Antonio). I’ve regularly praised the Nelson & Antonio book for its adherence to the pulp nature of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original novels, and the finale delivers the sword-slashing, race-against-time cliffhanger I expected. Nelson had some pacing difficulties in the first two issues or so, but once he got Carter to Mars (and picked up Antonio as penciler), Warlord really established itself as a comic that delivered every month. Fortunately, Dynamite is continuing the book, so there should be more thrills a-coming.

I love Roger Langridge’s writing, but I’m not so sure Marvel’s John Carter is going to do it for me. I think Andrade’s art is striking, but it’s not right for Barsoom. Everybody’s a little too skinny, and the Tharks aren’t menacing enough. Which leads us to the second problem with the book — this is an all-ages title, and Barsoom needs to be more red in tooth and claw than that rating will allow. This is a fine comic book, but it’s no Warlord of Mars, if you get what I’m saying. Slightly sanitized, all John Carter has going for it is the fantastic scenery and a web of coincidences that hold the plot together. That’s not a criticism of ERB’s work, but a point of fact: atmosphere is everything in the Barsoom stories (literally, in the first novel), and the more atmosphere that’s lacking, the less interesting the book is. If you want the real Barsoom experience, Dynamite’s is the version you should be reading.

Now, about my twin Bongo set. Simpsons 182 is another solid effort, as Marge starts selling a spot remover formula on Springfield’s Home Shopping Network and Ralph Wiggum acts as Bart’s conscience at Principal Skinner’s insistence. Ian Boothby’s book-length story has at least a half dozen solid laughs in it, which is all you want from a humor comic. Sergio Aragones’ Funnies 3 (how did I miss issue 2?) also delivers laughs, a couple of them at Sergio’s expense. His story about a comic book he developed through much effort but that came to naught still somehow allows Sergio to tell the story he originally wanted to tell — and then the punch line reveals that as brilliant as Sergio is, he occasionally coughs up an idea so terrible that his friends continue to tease him about it years later. There are more spot-the-difference puzzles (I’m 0-for-5 on these) and one-page gags as well, and another slice-of-life story from Sergio’s youth in Mexico that demonstrates his basic human decency and zest for life’s funny twists. I dunno, I love the guy and his comics make me happy. Lately everything I’ve added to my pull list has ended up cancelled within three months, so I’m reluctant to add this now, but I hate that I missed issue 2. I shall have to be more vigilant, because I want this book to last.

As difficult as it is to believe, I actually bought some comics this week that have no doppelganger. Alpha Flight 4 is a pretty good version of the Canadian superhero team everybody in Canada currently loves to hate. Fred Eaglesham has toned down Marina’s costume, Mac Hudson has to do some inspirational Canadian stuff (he’s their Captain America, you know — he’s even been dead once or twice himself), and even Northstar finally comes around and rejoins the team (he needs the help in order to free his boyfriend, who’s currently a prisoner of the evil Canadian government). There’s some stuff I don’t understand and don’t care to (it’s a Fear Itself crossover, ’nuff said), but on balance this is a solid if not spectacular superhero book. Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak have done a good job balancing all the characters’ storylines (I’m enjoying Puck as a conspiracy theory buff living the dream of being right about most of his crackpot ideas), with the possible exception of Sasquatch’s “football-induced brain damage” plot. They’ve left open the possibility that the government doctors are lying to him, but I don’t see a good way out of that corner. If the doctors are lying, then the storyline is unnecessary; if they’re telling the truth, that’s a moment of depressing reality injected into my escapist literature. I just don’t know that I like either option.

Amazing Spider-Man 669 is rife with things I like, however. Just as the Spider Virus is cracked by Reed Richards, it enters its second phase, which involves transforming people into actual spider-faced bipeds. Dan Slott has Peter step up in a huge way, using his recently-learned martial arts powers to save Carlie and impress her in the act. It’s elements such as this that make me appreciate Slott’s brilliance even more. He keeps a lot of plates spinning at all times, and then dips back to remind you of plates he set up a few months ago — and he does it while maintaining an exhilarating forward motion at all times. Ohh, and guess who’s been infected with the Spider Virus? I’ll give you a hint: his/her initials are JJJ. You know, for a multi-issue, cash-grab, mega-event storyline, the Spider Island ain’t so bad. (This is the only book in the chain I’m reading, however.)

Batman: The Brave and the Bold 11 is another all-around good time story from Sholly Fisch, but with art by Dario Brizuela rather than Rick Burchett. Brizuela approximates the house style well enough, and Fisch’s time-travel story about Batman meeting Jonah Hex and Ra’s Al-Ghul in 1879 Gotham is another story that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 50s. It’s a lot of fun — that G-rated Jonah Hex is rather courteous, which is hysterical if you’re familiar with Jonah’s normal personality — but I missed Burchett’s art. There’s something Sprangian about his page layouts and poses that would have given this story an extra oomph. It’s still a fun read, and recommended for people who don’t care about any of the new Batbooks — this series is more fun than Bats has been in a long time.

Taking all that into consideration, I’m torn between Warlord of Mars and Amazing Spider-Man. Warlord fulfilled its early promise, told its story truly and kept me entertained for nine months. Amazing Spider-Man has also done all that, plus there was something joyously goofball about Peter resorting to some very old tricks in order maintain a secret identity in a city full of people who can now pass for Spider-man. I think that has to tip the scale in Spidey’s favor. All right, so Amazing Spider-Man is the best thing I read this week. That’s becoming a more frequent refrain around these parts, isn’t it?

DC REBOOT IN FULL EFFECT! 78 NEW NUMBER 1’s THIS WEEK, 96 MORE TO FOLLOW NEXT WEEK. Not really, but it sure does feel like it, don’t it? When I walked in the shop this week and saw all those shiny new number 1’s spread out into the new graphic novel shelves, I experienced a sense of … I don’t know what the word would be. I was relieved after the past 60 days of speculation and hand-wringing to finally see the comics at the center of the hubbub, but then I saw all those names — J.T. Krul, Tony Daniel, Judd Winnick — and I made the same face I did when medicine was forced down my throat in my childhood. And I’m not saying this to be a contrarian or just to fight against the current, but after flipping through a few of them, I finally made up my mind about this whole deal.

My decision is this: I don’t think this gimmick is enough to make me start reading books I wasn’t reading before. Listen, I’ve probably only bought ten Superman books in 30 years, so I’m not gonna commit effort and money towards him now just because his costume makes him look like Bruce Springsteen ca. 1977 on a lunch break. And I like Batman, but I like the Batman that existed in the 40s and the 70s through early 90s, not anything they’ve done with him in the last 20 years (and he’s in way too many books, but whatever). Instead, I ended up buying the books that star characters I like who haven’t had a title in a while. And that means Static Shock 1 and OMAC 1 this week. I don’t need or want the hype to check these books out — I want the stories.

Scott McDaniel and John Rozum do an OK job with Static Shock. There’s definitely a whiff of classic Spider-Man in Static, and that’s fine by me. And McDaniel and Rozum waste no time throwing you into Virgil Hawkins’ life — he’s the super-smart, sciencey high school student of your dreams who’s interning at S.T.A.R. Labs while superheroing in his spare time — but I felt a little lost. It’s been a long time since I read a Static comic; some more background would be nice (why’d the Hawkins family leave Dakota? What’s the deal with Virgil’s sister?), but overall this is a solid first issue.

OMAC was a huge leap of faith for me. On the one hand, I love OMAC, and I love Keith Giffen (that’s two fingers on the hand), but on the other, I hate Dan Didio as a writer; I couldn’t even stick it out for the third issue of his Metal Men, and that was Metal Men. OMAC’s been done a lot of ways, and the only one that works is the original Jack Kirby take, that of a reluctant hero who’s being lead around blindly by Eye in the Sky and starts to question if he’s doing the right thing. This version of OMAC is not only close to that conception, but the pacing is very much in the Kirby spirit, with a ton of forward momentum driving a streamlined plot at warp speed. It’s also impossible to understate the importance of Giffen’s art; this is some of his most Kirby-inspired work, right down to the layout of the panels. I love the look of this book so much. Simply seeing that Giffen cover was enough to make me buy this one. I suspect I’ll stay with it as long as Giffen’s involved — just like I would have pre-relaunch.

Elric: The Balance Lost 3, by Chris Roberson and Francesco Biagini, further confirms my suspicion that Roberson is trying to cram too much into this series. This issue features a lot of two-page chunks of the various characters moving closer to a convergence — Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and Beck, if you’re keeping score at home — with none of them getting enough time to distinguish one from the other. Look, I’ve read a lot o Moorcock; I know these guys. Elric should be gloomy and morose, Corum should be vaguely optimistic, Hawkmoon is a haunted man who refuses to give up hope and Beck should be unflagging in his enthusiasm to defeat the odds. All of those characterizations flicker almost into sight at various points of this issue, but none of the characters get a moment where an unfamiliar reader could spot the differences. I applaud Roberson’s ambition and his commitment to telling a story more in the style of current Moorcock, but the title character of this book should be playing a more prominent role. If I’m a little foggy about what’s going on here, I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who’s not read a lot of Moorcock.

Kirby Genesis 3 has fewer of those sorts of problems, but it also suffers slightly from sporting an over-large cast, few of whom are familiar on sight at this point. However, Kurt Busiek has a stand-in for us in the person of normal guy, Kirby, who’s trying to catch up to and aid the girl he loves (who’s currently possessed by the alien spirit of The Swan). Kirby’s confusion about the who/what/why of it all mirrors our own uncertainty, so the pervasive sense of “wait, what?” is actually a narrative device. Like Elric, this is another big, fast moving story, but Busiek is doing a better job of reminding us who every character is and what their status is within all the groups. Again, Jack Herbert is a fine, clever draughtsman when it comes to the pencils, but then Alex Ross punches up a page or two and it’s so much more vibrant and eye-catching that I — once again — ask him to take this on full-time as penciler. Or bring Giffen over to take care of this bad boy.

Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris 6 continues the extra-pulpy adventures of the future Mrs. John Carter by having her encounter the Pirate Queen of Mars and her underlings. One thing worth pointing out is that these (non-canon) comics star a much more active and competent heroine than the original Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels. I believe it’s the second novel in which Dejah spends a year trapped in a slowly rotating prison because she just didn’t jump out the doorway when she had a chance. Arvid Nelson’s version of Dejah is much more capable and determined, and that’s the big appeal here. She’s never a victim in this book, and she’s never waiting to be saved — in fact, she’s the one doing the saving. I’m sure given another issue or two, she’ll turn the tables on the pirates and once again rescue her father and grandfather, and then save all of Helium through her bravery and intelligence. In fact, I’m counting on it. That’s the appeal of pulp fiction — you want the payoff, and the creators want to give it to you.

That sure sounds like the best thing I read this week, and it almost was. But Randy Stradley and Douglas Wheatley are doing such a phenomenal job with Star Wars: Dark Times (number 2 of 5) that they’re going to pip Dejah Thoris at the post. Haunted and hunted Jedi Das Jennir continues his race across galaxies with Darth Vader hot on his trail, but Jennir still finds time to protect and serve the public at large. After the very good but-fractured-by-scheduling-problems Blue Harvest series (five issues in 20 months), getting this issue six weeks after the first felt like a miracle. Stradley may be the finest Star Wars scripter currently working, able to work in the big characters like Vader and the Emperor while using expanded universe guys like Das Jennir to keep things fresh (John Ostrander is his only rival, but Ostrander doesn’t have a SW book right now). How great is it to see the Emperor scold Vader for continuing his vendetta against the remnants of the Jedi while there’s an Empire to consolidate and intimidate? Very great — this feels like the real Star Wars here. Jennir’s up to his beard in it again, as his traveling companion, Ember, has duped him into helping her with a great big fat lie. There’s drama, action, interesting characters, old favorites and — AND — some of the best sci-fi art going thanks to Wheatley (his Vader is one of the all-time greats). I’m admittedly biased towards Star Wars, but I’m also very demanding about what’s presented as being “Star Wars” these days, so believe me, I’m as surprised as you are that Star Wars: Dark Times is the best thing I read this week.

-Paul